By Tom Balmforth and Yuliia Dysa for Reuters
Ukrainian servicemen operate a Soviet-made T-72 tank in the Sumy region, near the border with Russia, on August 12, 2024, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photo: AFP / Roman Pilipey
Ukraine said on Wednesday it had destroyed Russian pontoon bridges with US-made weapons to defend its incursion into Russia's Kursk region, while Moscow said its forces had halted Kyiv's advance there and gained ground in eastern Ukraine.
Kyiv has announced a string of battlefield successes since it crossed unexpectedly into Kursk region on 6 August, but Moscow has steadily inched forward in eastern Ukraine, pressuring troops worn down by two-and-a-half years of fighting.
Olaf Scholz, chancellor of close ally Germany, said he expected Ukraine's push in Kursk region to be a "very limited operation in terms of space and probably also in terms of time", emphasising that Berlin had not been consulted in advance.
Ukraine has closely guarded its overarching aims in the Kursk region, but said that it has carved out a buffer zone from an area that Russia has used to pound targets in Ukraine with cross-border strikes.
A video posted by Ukrainian special forces showed strikes on several pontoon crossings in Kursk region, where Russia has reported that Ukraine has destroyed at least three bridges over the Seym river as it seeks to hold the pocket of captured land.
"Where do Russian pontoon bridges 'disappear' in the Kursk region? Operators ... accurately destroy them," Ukraine's Special Operations Forces said on Telegram messenger.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry has said Kyiv's advance into the Kursk region has made bigger territorial gains than those made by Moscow in Ukraine this year. Russia has called the incursion an escalation.
Ukraine smashed through the Russian border in the Kursk region on 6 August in an attempt to force Moscow to divert troops from the rest of the front, though Russian forces have continued to advance in recent days.
Russia took the settlement of Zhelanne, which lies less than 20km to the east of the transport hub Pokrovsk, according to the Russian defence ministry. Kyiv's military has not directly commented on Russia's advances near Pokrovsk, while reporting heavy fighting nearby.
An image taken from a handout footage released by the Russian Defence Ministry on August 21, 2024, reportedly shows a Russian Mi-35m attack helicopter firing rockets on Ukrainian armed forces at the border area of Kursk region in Russia. Photo: AFP / Russian Defence Ministry/ Handout
Both sides reported being targeted by major drone attacks. Ukraine said it intercepted 50 of 69 drones launched by Russia; Moscow said its air defences destroyed 45 drones over Russian territory, including 11 over the Moscow region.
Reporting back to Moscow, Major General Apti Alaudinov, commander of Chechnya's Akhmat special forces and the deputy head of the defence ministry's military-political department, said that Russia had stalled the Ukrainian incursion.
"We halted them and started pushing them back," Alaudinov told Rossiya state television. He said Ukrainian forces were regrouping and could soon launch a new attack, though he gave no further details.
Russia has repeatedly said the Ukrainian offensive has been halted. Ukraine has continued to tout gains and says it has captured 92 settlements over an area of more than 1250 square km.
The incursion has given a much-needed morale boost for the Ukrainian military, which has not made significant gains on its own soil since late 2022.
Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Ukrainian parliament's national defence committee, said Russia's priority remained to capture the Donetsk region despite the incursion and that it was not pulling forces from near Pokrovsk to act as reinforcements.
"The enemy indeed began to transfer some troops... But they have a principal position - not to withdraw troops from the Pokrovsk direction," he was quoted as saying by Espreso.TV media.
Strikes on logistics
Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank in Kyiv, said Ukraine's attacks on bridges and pontoons would help Kyiv to build up a defensive line along the river.
"This is an opportunity to make it more stable, systemic, ready to repel Russian attacks," he said in remarks on national television.
Reuters confirmed that all the strike locations of pontoon bridges shown in the video were located on or next to the Seym river in the Kursk region.
The video also showed drone strikes on military trucks and other locations described as a Russian munitions warehouse and an electronic warfare complex in the region. Other locations or the date when the video was filmed could not be independently verified.
Separately, Reuters was able to verify that at least one pontoon crossing seems to have been destroyed.
It was likely set up between 14-17 August between the Russian settlements of Zvannoe and Glushkovo after two bridges were destroyed or damaged earlier.
The crossing, some 14km from the border, was gone by 19 August, satellite imagery showed. Smoke was also visible in images from the area that day.
The Ukrainian statement said US-manufactured HIMARS rocket systems had been used as part of operations to disrupt Russian logistics in the Kursk region, Kyiv's first official statement acknowledging its use of the weapon during its incursion.
Washington has not commented directly on the use of US-made weapons in Kursk region, while saying US policies have not changed and that Ukraine was defending itself from Russia's ongoing all-out invasion.
While allies have barred Ukraine from conducting long-range strikes with Western weapons inside Russia, they have allowed Kyiv to use them to hit border areas since Russia's new offensive on Kharkiv region this spring.
-Reuters
